BOUNDARIES

Good fences make good neighbors.

According to dictionary.com, this familiar saying means: "Good neighbors respect one another's property. Good farmers, for example, maintain their fences in order to keep their livestock from wandering onto neighboring farms."

Perhaps a contemporary rendition of the above adage would be: Healthy boundaries make healthy relationships.

I am really crappy at setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. I frequently feel torn between two options: taking care of the people around me or taking care of myself. I know in my head that I need to take care of myself in order to be able to take care of  others, but I often feel like I'm in an either-or, crisis situation, like choosing to help one must come at the cost of harming the other.

I hate conflict. 

I hate lose-lose situations.

I hate making decisions when choosing A comes at the expense of not choosing B.

Among the various assignments my therapist has given me over the past couple of months, two in particular are: (1) look for opportunities to practice being more assertive and (2) determine what your boundaries are and try to stick to them.

"I know this is going to be really hard for you at first," she acknowledged, "but it will get easier with practice. I promise."

I am a people pleaser. I want to make everyone happy.

Sometimes, that simply isn't possible.

I was put in the difficult position recently of having to choose between honoring my personal boundaries - boundaries essential for my own physical and mental well-being - or compromising my boundaries for someone else's benefit. To be more precise, I wasn't just "put in a difficult position" - I was actively pressured to violate my boundaries. To make things even more challenging and stressful, the other person involved was someone I truly care for. I felt like I was forced into a choice between hurting myself or hurting a friend.

* * *

We are going to pause here to take a detour. Before I tell you the outcome of my dilemma - and the choice I made - I want to describe the tumult of emotions this situation elicited in me.

I felt anxious, stressed, frustrated. Do I choose A or do I choose B? A or B? What's it gonna be, Camille? Make a decision, Camille. You need to decide what you're going to do, NOW!

I felt sad and I felt guilty. Sad because either choice would result in hurting someone I cared about. Guilty because no matter what I decided, it would be WRONG.

I felt afraid. Whatever I decided, what would others think? Would they be critical? Would they talk bad about me? Would there be negative push-back?

I felt angry. I was angry that I been put in this situation at all, angry that I was being forced to make a decision that should have never been put to me in the first place. Angry that phrases like "team player" and "it's part of the job" and "Well, somebody's gotta do it!" had been carelessly lobbed my direction and impacted like nuclear warheads.

I appealed for an outside opinion, for a hearing from an impartial court. I messaged my therapist. I messaged three women whose wisdom I deeply respect.

No response.

I cried. Had a full-blown, snot-nosed fall-apart.

Please, God, what am I supposed to do?!

Still no replies.

God was going to make me fight this battle on my own.

* * *

Detour over.

I chose A.

I chose to honor my personal boundaries.

I chose to say, "No, I will not ----. I am truly sorry this makes things harder for ----, but, as much as I want to help, that is not my problem."

And then, I threw up.

* * *

The Rest of the Story

Afterward, I felt emotionally and physically like a limp, dirty, stinking dishrag.

But I also felt incredibly calm.

And - I don't really know how to put this - I felt strangely solid. Like I was more of a real person than I had been in a long, long time.

Ding!

Too late to influence my decision, I received a reply from one of the Wise Women I had texted. I touched the screen on my car's console, and Siri read aloud:

"Hold your boundaries. Have the humility to respect your boundaries and needs and recognize when you can't fix an insufficient system even though its failures have real impact. Self sacrifice to the point of burnout may make today easier for ---, but it's a pattern that is just gonna feed into and prolong an unhealthy situation...the more you do to [make up for deficiencies in the system], the more it helps push the need for actual change down the road."

God had not left me to fight that battle alone at all. He had been there the whole time, watching his frail child struggle to use new muscles, like a father watching a toddler take her very first legs-trembling steps. Once that scary first step had been taken, He rushed in to say, "You did it! Good work!"

I took a deep breath. I could truly say, "It is well with my soul."

My therapist assures me this will get easier with practice. I sure hope she's right.